Exposing a heritage in color & light.

• Author: Snow, K. Mitchell
• Position: Maria Cristina Orive photographs Latin America

Newsmagazine readers everywhere remember the photographs of Guatemala's Maria Cristina Orive--even if they don't remember her name. Her black and white images of figures like Isabel Peron and Salvador Allende telegraphed the tensions of Latin America's turbulent 1970s and continue to communicate the dynamics of the moment to contemporary viewers. Somber black and white seems well suited to Orive's news photographs from Latin American public life a generation ago. She also used black and white film to capture the personalities of cats, to trace the human form, and to record the architecture of Antigua, her home city, in images that are noteworthy for their beauty rather than their news value.

It is her color photographs of Guatemalan religious festivals, however, mat have earned her a lasting place in the history of Latin American photography. Long after the crises of public life have faded from memory, the vivid presence of Orive's Guatemalan villagers emphasizes a cultural richness that has sustained her nation throughout its history.

Orive is one of a handful of Latin American photographers to gain international recognition for work in color. Some of the region's photographers even maintain that black and white photography is the only appropriate medium to represent Latin American realities. Orive respectfully disagrees.

"During the mid-seventies Latin Americans began to get to know each other. We lived through the influence and the illusions of revolutions. We denounced imperialism, poverty. The photographs had to reflect the situation, and black and white was more suitable. But the true photographic reality of the continent wasn't limited to that. People are working in color too, depending on their individual inspirations and backgrounds. And black and white in the hands of Sandra Eleta, Cravo Neto, Sara Facio, and so many other artists of the continent isn't poor or miserable," she adds. "It's luxurious, poetic, vital."

Working in color also offered her some practical advantages. Although many photographers in Guatemala still find it difficult to locate the materials necessary to work in black and white, color film and professional developing services are readily available. Color also coincided with Orive's vision of her homeland.

"I had always wanted to define what it means to be Guatemalan," she says. "Miguel Angel Asturias's Legends of Guatemala is so visual that it always drove me to treat my country through photography.... Just as Antigua's architecture and stones inspired me to shoot in black and white, the rest of Guatemala is color. Without a doubt because of the indigenous people's clothing, but also because of its vegetation, its lakes, its light. Just like Asturias said, everything is color. That's what gave birth to my preference for color. I'm comfortable with it. I think I dream in color."

When work led her to Paris in the 1950s, Orive developed a friendship with Nobel laureate Asturias, then Guatemala's ambassador to France. She remembers Asturias as a great listener. When she explained the concept of what would become Acts of Faith in Guatemala to him, Asturias was excited by the possibilities.

"I argued that faith moved the Guatemalan people, that it motivates...